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Unit 23 operates as a critical practice
to establish and evolve the agendas,
methods, attitudes and directions
its graduates will take beyond
the institution. We approach the subject
and discipline of architectural
production as a broad and curious
field that oscillates between meaning
and means, representation and realisation,
experience and expertise. We
investigate and experiment within the
operations, protocols, roles, deceptions
and tales of making experimental
architecture. Students are expected
to take possession of their work
as critical research in developing
their knowledge, skill and ideas.

Inspired by the Borgesian parallel world of Tlon whereabouts our everyday assumptions of time, space and the individual are challenged. An island exists where anything imagined can take physical form, simultaneous sliding doors type situations, where time, the self and the double, imagination, memory and dream are sliding around in an infinite pool of possibilities. The architectures are located in symbolic moments of memories, dreams and realities of the inhabitant of the Island and assemble to tell the narrative of a journey through the magical landscape of his mind.

Rules on the Borgesian Island:

TIME: does not exist – only as the indefinite present, the present hope and the present memory. MULTIPLE REALITY: all realities that could occur, do occur, simultaneously. These are infinite. It is just chance that we happen to be in this reality. MEMORY: objects become effaced and lose their details when forgotten, duplication of lost objects is not infrequent. IMAGINATION: objects educed by hope (in the future) can and do exist. They can be convoked and dissolved in a moment, according to poetic needs. DREAM: while we are asleep here, we are awake elsewhere and that in this way, everyman is two men. A dreamt or imagined being can exist and is a phantom.